Heat sinks are passive cooling components used for removing the heat released by electronic devices. If the cooling process is performed in a passive manner, the cooling of an electronic device advantageously does not need to be done by using external energy. Heat removal is performed by firstly transmitting heat to heat sink fins from a heat source and then, by means of convection and radiation, transmitting heat into the air through the fins. Light emitting diode (LED) chips or LED packages used in LED lamps for generating light convert the majority of the energy used into heat. The temperature of a chip, which increases together with the heat that cannot be removed, decreases the amount and quality of the generated light, shortens the life of the chip, and may cause the eventual failure of the LED. A heat sink with the required cooling capacity also needs to meet the optical, mechanical and aesthetic criteria of LED lamps to maintain the chip temperature at a secured level.
The amount of heat that is released by high-output LED lamps and is required to be removed is also high. Thus, a problem is the high amount of heat released by small-sized LEDs and electronics that is required to be removed. Furthermore, removing the heat by means of cooling components remaining within size and weight constraints with defined standards is a problem of LED lamps.
Prior LED lamps and heat sinks have not had sufficient capacity that allow for high luminous flux and that perform the cooling required for LED lamps generating high heat. A low weight heat sink that has a high cooling performance, provides the desired luminous flux, has a function suitable for the habits of a usage area, and enables the entire system remaining within the defined form factor limits, is not generally present in the current applications. In prior systems where active cooling is used, the actively cooled heat sink (for example using fans) decreases the reliability of the system and causes extra energy loss. However, in the systems presented as passive, the contact of air with the heat sink fin surfaces is inefficient and heat sink sizes increase according to the ground.
Optical design also plays an important role to extract the maximum amount of lumens from a lighting system. In many instances, the optics used in lighting require a precise thermal solution to avoid thermal related optical losses. An effective lighting system should have a hybrid thermo-optical approach but many systems perform this separately. A joint design will bring maximum lumen extraction at less heat sink weight and size.
Internet of things (IOT) brought lighting systems into a new platform. With IOT, many sensors can be incorporated with the lighting system and data can be collected and transmitted to a remote location or be made available online. Sensing desired parameters and then collecting and transmitting data is rather new and many inventions are necessary to find the most optimal approach.
As a result of the above-mentioned drawbacks and the insufficiencies of prior solutions in lighting systems, an improvement is required to be made in the related technical field.